Convert spherical coordinates into Cartesian coordinates

[cga]

For the math gurus out there: I have a spreadsheet that lists the right ascension, declination and distance for about 30,000 local star systems. What I would like to do is convert these spherical coordinates into Cartesian coordinates. What would be the best way to go about this?

[Tyr_7BE]

Do you mean what software would be best for this, or how do you do it?

I found this on google...not sure if it'll meet your needs, but it tells you how to do what you're asking: http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/AllBr...icalCoords.asp

As for software to do this, there are a variety of options. If you're big into Matlab, then octave is a wonderful mathematics program. It's at http://www.octave.org/ with extra packages at http://octave.sf.net/ (I believe it's apt-gettable on Ubuntu hoary). However, I'm pretty sure that once you have an algorithm worked out, Gnumeric should be able to handle this task just fine.